Mexico's New Politics: The PAN and Democratic Change (review)

This is a well-written, illuminating, and insightful exploration of Mexico's second-largest party. In its scope and general subject matter, Shirk's study resembles Kathleen Bruhn's excellent, Taking on Goliath: The Emergence of a New Left Party and the Struggle for Democracy in Mexico (1997), which analyzed Mexico's main leftist opposition force, the Party of the Democratic Revolution. All told, Mexico's New Politics represents a significant contribution to the scholarly literature and a must-read for specialists in Mexican politics.

Shirk writes from the perspective of a sympathetic critic—favorably disposed to the PAN but academically detached and perspicacious in his treatment of the party. He begins by tracing the PAN's history: the brilliance of its founders, its synthesis of liberal democratic values and Catholic humanism, its repression and disparagement at the hands of Mexico's ruling establishment, the party's survival as a "responsible opposition," the ascendance of center-left religious factions during the 1960s and 1970s, the influx of business-oriented neopanistas in the 1980s and 1990s, the ascendance of Vicente Fox in the 2000 race, and continuing factional divisions within the party. Shirk also provides an excellent analysis of the PAN in power, both at the municipal and gubernatorial levels, and under Vicente Fox. This analysis calls attention to the populist style and sophisticated marketing that made Fox so effective as a candidate, but also a disappointment as president (at least to many observers). The appendices contain useful information about PAN leaders as well as quantitative data on members and activists; the bibliography is spotty on material published after 2003 but is otherwise quite comprehensive.

The PAN has already been the subject of several books: Victoria Rodríguez and Peter Ward (1995), Soledad Loaeza (1999), Kevin Middlebrook (2001), and Yemile Mizrahi (2003), among others. Mexico's New Politics extends and sometimes challenges their research. In addition to reviewing existing sources, Shirk marshals extensive evidence of his fieldwork in Mexico, including interviews with most of the key figures in the party. This data allows Shirk convincingly to dispel several popular misperceptions about the PAN: as an appendage of the Church, as a representative of Mexico's privileged classes, as an opportunistic collaborator with the old regime, or as a champion of socially retrograde policies. At the same time, his research also gives him insight into the party's continuing "club" nature and its Byzantine process of leadership selection. Readers are left with the image of a party that despite decades of existence and years running all levels of government remains in its adolescence, still wrestling with the question of what it wants to be when it grows up.

Shirk was one of the few scholars of Mexican politics to consistently predict Vicente Fox's victory in 2000. Given this background, his skepticism about the PAN's ability to hold the presidency in 2006—for internal as much as external reasons—is particularly noteworthy. His comparisons between Fox and possible PRD candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador are also trenchant. One issue that Shirk does not address—because it happened after the book went to press—is the apparent complicity of PAN leaders in ill-conceived and undemocratic attempts to force López Obrador out of the presidential race. Those attempts have obvious implications for our understanding of the party—ones that, among other things, might call into question its commitment to liberal-democratic principles. On the other hand, the PAN's behavior may be explicable in terms of the factionalism and internal oligarchy that Shirk emphasizes, factors that will clearly loom large in the 2006 presidential race.